Group representing residential school survivors says compensation deal flawed
WINNIPEG - It's the largest-ever compensation deal in Canadian history - but groups that represent thousands of aboriginal people have come forward to say it's flawed.
The National Residential School Survivors Society is calling for a judicial review of the $5-billion Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.
That means claimants might have to go back to court to reopen the deal.
"Survivors want to take the high road, because most of us signed on with the agreement, but we did not sign on to all these problems," Ted Quewezance, a lead spokesman for the society, said Thursday in Winnipeg.
The society is a coalition of survivor groups from British Columbia to Ontario and represents 32,000 survivors of residential schools.
They claim to have catalogued 460 complaints dating back five years on the way the settlement money is being paid out, how claimants are treated and how mechanisms to deal with the role of survivors have failed.
"The settlement agreement is an out-of-court settlement that is to be monitored by the courts," said national society chairman Ray Mason. "Yet each day we have survivors complaining about the treatment by a consortium of lawyers, the role of Canada, lost records, information not provided, adjudicators not respecting our culture or language.
"Why is the court not taking responsibility?"
The deal was designed to compensate 80,000 First Nations and **>Inuit<** children who were forcibly removed from their homes in the course of more than a century. They were sent away to schools that have been accused of being part of a plan of cultural genocide. Many children also suffered physical, sexual and emotional abuse.
In 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally apologized for the schools, which churches ran and governments funded for more than a century.
The deal and the apology were supposed to herald a new era of reconciliation, but it hasn't turned out that way.
"Disgust and apathy - that's what a lot of them feel. It's like going back to residential school again," said Mike Cachagee, the group's executive director.
In response, the federal government said the deal is done.
"The IRSSA is a court-approved and court-monitored class-action settlement of all (Indian residential school) claims across Canada and does not include a requirement for an independent review," said a media spokeswoman for Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development.
(Winnipeg Free Press) -CP- | 
